Photo Source: Camera Sport
Wimbledon, Day 12: and then there were four: Men’s semifinal kicks off at the Championships on Friday, and it’s all to play for.
See the full Day 12 Order of Play Here
Here’s a look inside the matchups…
Fritz vs Alcaraz
Head-to-Head: Alcaraz leads 2-0 Trend: Alcaraz has won 23 straight and also 19 on the trot at Wimbledon as he bids for his third consecutive title at the Championships.
So it goes for the American men. As we learned when we watched Jannik Sinner take down Ben Shelton in quarterfinal action on Tuesday, the gap between Sinner, Alcaraz and the Americans is still pretty large.
Enter Taylor Fritz, the man who has done nothing but impress during this grass court season, with a chance to prove to all of us that it isn’t as large as we think.
Fritz certainly has enough firepower to put himself in position to call a lot of the shots on Friday against Alcaraz. He’ll look to get into his serve-plus-one patterns and keep Alcaraz from being creative by peppering him with depth and pace. Sounds great in theory, but we all know how thin the margins are on a grass court, and in a match of this importance at Wimbledon.
Fritz will need to play the match of his life to get this done.
Alcaraz is extremely adaptive on the grass (he's 34-3 lifetime in the surface!) and has a tool to turn every trick, a key to every lock and all the confidence that comes with earning 19 consecutive wins at the Championships. That said, he is prone to the lapses in concentration, and in those lapses lie Fritz’s chance to impose himself and to put pressure on the Spaniard.
It’s easy to imagine Fritz doing it for spells, but not over five sets, and not enough to actually win.
Pick: Alcaraz in four
Djokovic vs Sinner
Head-to-Head: Sinner leads 5-4 Trend: Sinner has won the last four and the last two at the majors, but Djokovic has taken both of the pair’s meetings at Wimbledon.
Intrigue surrounds the tenth career meeting of Novak Djokovic and Sinner in multiple ways. First, there are the health concerns. Djokovic suffered a scary fall during his four-set win over Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday, and he only had to play two points to finish out the match so we don’t really know anything about the severity of the injury. It could be nothing at all, but Djokovic did cancel his practice on Thursday.
It may work in Djokovic’s favor if he is uninjured. Imagine Sinner trying to prepare for what type of tennis the Grand Slam king is going to throw at him? He'll have to lay out two game plans in his mind. Obviously Djokovic will need to play with a pretty high risk quotient, but if he’s not 100 percent in his legs, he’ll have to really redline.
If they are both healthy, we should expect a better match than we saw in Paris when the pair met in the semifinals last month. Djokovic played so well against Sinner in that match, but he couldn't produce the level of physicality to match the Italian, who was firing on all cylinders as he reached his first final at Roland-Garros.
On grass, Djokovic will be able to make more inroads with his serve, and he’ll benefit from shorter points in general, putting less strain on his body will allow him to approach the challenge with freshness.
He’ll want to make Sinner uncomfortable any way he can, and he’s one of few players with enough tools in his bag to actually execute on that type of strategy. Look for Djokovic to play crafty tennis, but he’ll also look to pull the trigger early as he seeks to avoid allowing Sinner’s breathtaking power to hold sway over the contest.
As for Sinner, he appears to have hit a higher level on grass than he has ever played before, and it’s going to be difficult to derail him if he plays his best. If his right elbow isn’t an issue, he’s a player with very few – if any – weaknesses to probe.
Pick: Sinner in four